Attenborough: 60 Years in the Wild

Published: 21 May 2013 (GMT+10)

BBC TV

Attenborough: 60 Years in the Wild is a three-part BBC TV series
that premiered in the UK in November 2012, and was shown in Australia in May
2013. It portrays highlights of Sir David’s 60-year career of making
wildlife documentaries.

The first episode, ‘Life on Camera’, shows the developing excellence
of his filming equipment and techniques. These range from the clockwork movie
cameras used in the 1950s (which he says “made a noise like a cement
mixer”), to modern video cameras used underwater, infrared cameras used
for night-time shots of lions hunting,
thermal cameras used to show the Galápagos
marine iguanas sunning themselves, optical probes used to investigate ants’ nests,
digital cameras and computers used to condense the arrival of Spring into a
few seconds, and computer animation used to depict extinct
animals.

However, we do not agree with his evolutionary
storyline, which we believe is historically and
scientifically wrong.
This article will therefore deal with this aspect of his worldview, presented
principally in the second episode of this TV series, entitled ‘Understanding
the Natural World’. (Episode 3, entitled ‘Our Fragile Planet’,
is on Conservation.)

Miller’s experiment produced a few amino acids, but did
not simulate earth’s early conditions.

Sir David begins his exposition of evolution by telling viewers that “in
the 1950s we knew next to nothing about the great mystery of all, the origin
of life. And then, in 1952, a young post-graduate student at the University
of Chicago, Stanley Miller, decided to try and re-create the conditions of
the early earth in a laboratory.” In this experiment (which we show in
the diagram), Miller passed a high voltage electric spark (simulating lightning)
through a flask containing methane, ammonia, water vapour, and hydrogen (simulating
Earth’s alleged earliest atmosphere). Then Attenborough says:

“A week later, he found a brown liquid in the bottom of his flask. It contained
amino acids, the building blocks of life. Stanley Miller had demonstrated that
the first steps on the path leading to life had happened spontaneously.”

Ever since then, this experiment has been heralded in textbooks and by the
popular press as ‘proving’ abiogenesis
or chemical evolution, i.e. that life can arise spontaneously from non-living
chemicals. However, Miller had shown no such thing. In fact, the many problems
in the experiment actually support the opposite view. These counter-indicators
include:

If Miller’s experiment shows anything, it is
that life cannot form from nonlife.

If Miller’s experiment shows anything, it is that life cannot form
from non-life.3 God says that He created the atmosphere suitable
to support life on Day 2 of Creation Week. He then created plant life on Day
3, animal life on Days 5 and 6, and human life on Day 6. The origin of life
is a mystery only to those who disregard Genesis chapter 1.

Attenborough then suggests “a different location for the origin of life”.2,4
He shows an eco-system 2,000 metres underwater at the bottom of the
Pacific Ocean consisting of giant tubeworms, small fish and crabs living
among active volcanic vents, and he says: “Some of the dissolved chemicals
were serving as food for bacteria; the bacteria nourished the tubeworms,
and they in turn were food for crabs and fish.”

Then: “Clearly vents such as these could have supported the first micro-organisms
that appeared in the primeval seas nearly 4,000 million years ago.”

Avoiding the unanswerable, Attenborough continues: “How did these early
forms of life give rise to the great diversity of creatures that live today?” And
he adds: “That problem has bothered thinkers since the very beginning
of science.” The problem is acute, since the ‘periods’ they ‘date’ as
very ‘early’, such as the Cambrian5
and Ediacaran,
exhibit ‘explosions’, where many diverse groups of life appear
abruptly. Well, it may have bothered atheists, but no such problem exists for
creationists. God created plants and animals according to their kinds (Genesis
chapter 1) some 6,000 years ago, and since then these created kinds have diversified
into all the species we see today.

Darwin and natural selection

Attenborough then appeals to Darwin’s theory of evolution by means of
natural selection, and says that in 1979, he used this theory as the basis
for the TV series ‘Life on Earth’. His first example from this
is to revisit the two types
of tortoises Darwin saw on the Galápagos Islands—the dome-backed
and the saddle-backed varieties.

However, as we pointed out in our response to his Galápagos TV series,
natural selection is not evolution, but a culling process that ‘chooses’ from
what is already there and exterminates unfavourable variations. In this case,
the saddle-backed, longer-necked tortoises can survive on the grass-free islands
because they can reach the tall cactus vegetation, whereas any dome-backed
short-necked tortoises there would starve. This is a
nice example of natural selection in operation, but it is adaptation within
a species, not microbe-to-man evolution. Such adaptation will not turn gooey
mush into Galápagos mega-reptiles.

Intermediate forms

1. The Australian lungfish

Darwinism requires intermediate forms, so Attenborough responds by offering
the Australian lungfish. This, he says: “lives in water just like an
ordinary fish, but it can also breathe air through a pouch in its throat like
a simple lung. And it pumps itself along the river bottom, using two pairs
of muscular fins placed low on its body, just like simple legs.”

However, research scientist Michael Denton (who is not a creationist) has
a more accurate analysis of this species. He writes:

The lung fish … has fins, gills, and an intestine containing a spiral
valve like any fish but lungs, heart and a larval stage like an amphibian. … Its
fish characteristics such as its gills and its intestinal spiral valve are
one hundred per cent typical of the condition found in many ordinary fish,
while its heart and the way the blood is returned to the heart from the lungs
is similar to the situation found in most terrestrial vertebrates. In other
words, although the lungfish displays a bewildering mixture of fish and amphibian
character traits, the individual characteristics themselves are not in any
realistic sense transitional between the two types. … Between lungfish
and amphibian there are tremendous gaps not bridged by any transitional
forms.6

Nevertheless, Attenborough proceeds with: “Fossils of fish very like
the Australian lungfish are known from rocks that are some 400 million years
old. And we can be pretty sure that those ancient fish could breathe air.”

We dispute that any rocks are 400 million years old. And we can be pretty
sure that when Attenborough says he’s pretty sure about anything, it
means he is repeating what others have said but they and he do not have the
evidence to support it.

2. Tiktaalik

Left: Tiktaalik on the cover of Nature, 6 April 2006.
Right: Footprints ‘millions of evolutionary years’ older, as shown
on Nature, 7 January 2010. Click each picture for a larger image.

Tiktaalik is Attenborough’s answer to the problem of how any
ancient fish could have managed to get out of the water and onto the land.
The fossil remains of this animal comprise a 20-cm-long fish skull and some
fossil front fins, with digits roughly like those of land vertebrates—found
in Arctic Canada in 2004. It was vigorously promoted by evolutionists as being
the 375-million-year-old extinct transitional link that was on its way to becoming
the first four-legged land vertebrate. In 2006, the fossil was featured on
the cover of Nature, in which an article said, “ … this
really is what our ancestors looked like when they began to leave the water.”7 Attenborough
shows viewers the fossil limb with its digits and then says: “This almost
certainly was the first limb to move a creature up onto land.”

Alas for Tiktaalik as a missing link, this assumption has been falsified.
Several well-preserved footprints undoubtedly made by a four-legged animal
were found in Poland in rock ‘dated’ at 18 million years older
than Tiktaalik. In 2010, Nature admitted: “They
force a radical reassessment of the timing, ecology and environmental setting
of the fish–tetrapod transition … .”8

However, Tiktaalik (like ‘Lucy’) has entered the folklore
of evolutionary story-telling, and we anticipate that evolutionists generally
(including those who make TV wildlife documentaries) won’t drop it until
they find something to replace it.

Distribution

Attenborough next asks: “Why is it that closely related groups of animals
can occur on both sides of an ocean—in West Africa and South America
for example?” His main example is frogs, but this is more of an exception
than a rule. For example, in Africa there are leopards, rhinoceroses, giraffes
and gorillas, but not in America. In America, there are raccoons, jaguars,
armadillos and opossums. Evolutionists usually claim that this is because different
animals evolved in different parts of the world.

The Bible provides a better explanation for the distribution of animals than does evolution. Click to enlarge.

Attenborough’s answer is much more interesting: maybe it wasn’t
the animals that moved, but the continents. And he advances the idea (now generally
believed by evolutionists) that the continents of the earth are fragments of
a much larger super continent that over millions of years drifted apart. In
support, he shows seashells that litter the high-up slopes of the Himalayas,
which he says were raised to their present height “about 65 million years
ago”. And he asks: “What forces could possibly have raised the
sea floor to these heights?” His answer: volcanic action at the bottom
of the sea.

The Bible doesn’t mention continental movement as such, but
Genesis
1:9–10 could imply that God originally created one land mass. If
there was only one land mass before the Flood, there would have been no problem
about now-distant animals boarding the Ark. During the Flood, catastrophic
plate tectonics (not today’s claimed drift rates of 2–15
cm per year) could have supplied the massive catastrophic geological processes
that lifted up the Himalayas and other mountain ranges some 4,500 (not 65
million) years ago.

Communication

Attenborough next discusses how animals communicate with one another. He demonstrates
responses when he imitates a woodpecker’s tapping,9 when he
simulates the noise of a female cicada’s wing-flick by snapping his fingers,
and by howling to summon a wolf. Of particular interest is a species of monkey
shown that has a single call that means “Snake!” and another single
call that means “Danger from the air [or Eagle]!” And he goes so
far as to label these calls “the beginning of a vocabulary”. In
fact, animals communicate in many different ways, including display, body posture,
gestures, facial expression, vocal calls, the emission of odours, the use of
body secretions that some use to mark territories, and so on.

What
animals don’t have is a grammatical language. When God made human beings,
He made them (and only them) “in His image”
(Genesis
1:26–27),10 and He gave the capacity for grammatical
language only to mankind. Because we have this God-given ability, not only
can we communicate explicitly and extensively with each other, but we can
also communicate with God by prayer, and He can communicate with us via His
written Word, the Bible.

Evolution, genetics and animal behaviour

Attenborough next briefly mentions Richard Dawkins’ book The Selfish
Gene, which he says, “argues that it is the gene which drives
evolution. The survival of an individual animal is of less importance than
the survival of its genes.” He illustrates this by showing ants prepared
to die in the process of defending their colony, and meerkats that cooperate
for the good of the group, in both cases (he says) to ensure the transmission
of the group’s genes to the next generation.

However, altruism overall is actually a problem for evolutionists. “[T]he
explanation for helpful animals cannot be found in a purposeless theory like
evolution, but rather in understanding that God the Creator has placed the
world’s array of animals on earth for His glory and to fill particular
roles in the planet’s ecology. That some creatures should help others
in maintaining that role is no surprise to those who know that God—not
evolution—created life on earth.”11 Evolutionary explanations
for altruism, including ‘kin
selection’, fall flat.

DNA

Attenborough makes the claim that humans share about 95% of our DNA with chimps.
This figure has been steadily revised downwards over the years and is now reckoned
to be a further 10% lower.12 Be that as it may, we also share about
50% of our DNA with bananas. As prominent evolutionist Steve Jones pointed
out, “that doesn’t make us half bananas, either from the waist
up or the waist down”.13

Also, investigation of the chimp Y chromosome has found that it “has
only two-thirds as many distinct genes or gene families as the human Y chromosome
and only 47% as many protein-coding elements as humans. Also, more than 30%
of the chimp Y chromosome lacks an alignable counterpart on the human Y chromosome
and vice versa.”14

Attenborough concludes: “Our DNA extends in an unbroken chain, right
to the beginning of life, 4,000 million years ago.” But he and his fellow
evolutionists are unable to explain the source of our DNA. This is because
the genetic
code is not an outcome of raw chemistry, but of elaborate decoding machinery
including the ribosome. Remarkably, this decoding machinery is itself
encoded in the DNA, and the noted philosopher of science Sir Karl Popper pointed
out: “Thus the code cannot be translated except by using certain products
of its translation. This constitutes a baffling circle; a really vicious circle,
it seems, for any attempt to form a model or theory of the genesis of the genetic
code.”15,16Natural
selection cannot help, as this requires self-replicating entities—therefore
it cannot explain their origin.

Most DNA sequences are poly-functional and so must also be poly-constrained.
This means that DNA sequences have meaning on several different levels (poly-functional)
and each level of meaning limits possible future change (poly-constrained).
For example, imagine a sentence which has a very specific message in its normal
form but with an equally coherent message when read backwards. Now let’s
suppose that it also has a third message when reading every other letter, and
a fourth message when a simple encryption program is used to translate it.
Such a message would be poly-functional and poly-constrained. We know that
misspellings in a normal sentence will not normally improve the message, but
at least this would be possible. However, a poly-constrained message
is fascinating, in that it cannot be improved. It can only degenerate.
Any misspellings which might possibly improve the normal sentence will be disruptive
to the other levels of information. Any change at all will diminish
total information with absolute certainty.

Conclusion

Sir David’s 60 years of wildlife programs, with their stunning photography,
have made a remarkable contribution to our knowledge of animals worldwide.
He has indeed fulfilled his ambition of bringing to our TV screens animal behaviour
that has never before been filmed. However, it is sad that in all this beauty,
he has not been able to see the hand of our Creator God.

When challenged on this, his reply is:

Well, if you ask … about that, then you see remarkable things like
that earwig and you also see all very beautiful things like hummingbirds, orchids,
and so on. But you also ought to think of the other, less attractive things.
You ought to think of tapeworms.

You ought to think of a parasitic worm that lives only in the eyeballs of
human beings, boring its way through them, in West Africa, for example, where
it’s common, turning people blind.

So if you say, “I believe that God designed and created and brought
into existence every single species that exists,” then you’ve also
got to say, “Well, he, at some stage, decided to bring into existence
a worm that’s going to turn people blind.” Now, I find that very
difficult to reconcile with notions about a merciful God.

First, Attenborough is wrong about this worm—it doesn’t normally
live in eyeballs and prefers not to. Secondly, God did not design things this
way, but they became this way after sin entered the world. This is
why we all (including Sir David) need a Saviour. That Saviour is the Creator,
the Lord Jesus Christ.

References

Also known as the Miller-Urey experiment. Prof. Harold Urey was
graduate student Stanley Miller’s supervisor at the University of Chicago.
Experiments done in 1952 were first published in 1953. Return to text.

This segment, from the BBC video, was not included in the Australian
showing of this episode by Channel 10 on May 13, 2013, possibly to accommodate
16 minutes of adverts included by Channel 10. Return to text.

In Australian slang we call this ‘having two bob each way’.
It means to “support contradictory causes at the same time, often in
self-protection”! See dictionary.babylon.com/have_two_bob_each_way/.
Return to text.

Woodmorappe, J., review of The
Cambrian Explosion: The Construction of Animal Biodiversity, by Douglas H. Erwin and James W. Valentine (2013), J.
Creation27(3), 2013 (to be published). Return to text.

Jones, S., interviewed at the Australian Museum on The Science
Show, broadcast on Australian ABC radio, 12 January 2002. See http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/almost-like-a-whale/3504048.
Return to text.

Popper, K.R., Scientific Reduction and the Essential Incompleteness
of All Science; in Ayala, F. and Dobzhansky, T., Eds., Studies
in the Philosophy of Biology, University of California Press, Berkeley, p. 270, 1974. Return to text.

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Comments closed

Readers’ comments

Peter N.,Australia, 21 May 2013

Loved the article—especially the following quotes:

“Thus the code cannot be translated except by using certain products of its translation. This constitutes a baffling circle; a really vicious circle, it seems, for any attempt to form a model or theory of the genesis of the genetic code.” ...

Actually, we should now say ‘codes’, because along the same stretch of DNA, there are also ‘epigenetic’ and ‘splicing’ codes. Multiple codes are an even bigger problem for evolution, as geneticist John Sanford, the inventor of the gene gun, pointed out: ...

[thus ANY] misspellings which might possibly improve the normal sentence will be disruptive to the other levels of information. Any change at all will diminish total information with absolute certainty.”

Terry P.,Australia, 21 May 2013

What curious reasoning…

«You ought to think of a parasitic worm that lives only in the eyeballs of human beings, boring its way through them, in West Africa, for example, where it’s common, turning people blind. So if you say, “I believe that God designed and created and brought into existence every single species that exists,” then you’ve also got to say, “Well, he, at some stage, decided to bring into existence a worm that’s going to turn people blind.” Now, I find that very difficult to reconcile with notions about a merciful God. — Attenborough»

…he can accept without question that his evolution god could bring into existence by chance a worm that turns people blind, but he cannot accept that a merciful God could design and create it. His evolution god is not so merciful, eh? Did his evolution god ever heal a man born blind, as Jesus did?

Chandrasekaran M.,Australia, 21 May 2013

Certainly Sir David and his team have produced many wildlife documentaries with stunning photography over many decades. Sadly he mutates the documentaries with microbes to moral Homo sapiens evolution storyline. Thus he presents evolution creation story which relies on mutation (copy mistakes) and natural selections ( DNA information culling).

In one of the documentaries, he said that every religions (worldviews) has its own creation story and that not all these stories can be correct because of inconsistencies. But reading between lines he suggests that his story, the evolution creation story of microbes to moral Homo sapiens is the correct one because it is a peer reviewed evolution science.

Evolution science is a merciless, purposeless and without any inherent moral constraint worldview which provides no hope for tomorrow.

Sir David falls into the category of there are none so blind as those who will not see.

Victor B.,Australia, 21 May 2013

A great article—I’m sure many people both, Bible-believing Christians and atheists alike have appreciated and been amazed at the incredible wild life documentaries made by Sir David Attenborough. Unfortunately it also shows dramatically how a person (such as Sir David) can be blind to the reality of God because of the ‘Evolutionary Worldview’ paradigm. More importantly the Bible (Romans 1:18–24) tells us that humanity is ‘without excuse’ and under God's wrath because we suppress the truth of what can be known about our Creator God from his very creation.

M. M.,Australia, 21 May 2013

I find it fascinating that in 60 yrs the apparatus used to film these series has been designed redesigned and changed to improve an end product. Yet the animals / wildlife being filmed have yet to show any evolutionary changes! So if man can designed better Cameras etc to show these wonderful things God Created, who have not changed from their kind. How can Mr Attenborough be blind to a Creator of all that he has filmed in the past 60yrs? truly they are blind who do not want to see …

Robert S.,Australia, 21 May 2013

As time goes on, the story of evolution is starting looking more like an absurd and comical B grade movie.

“All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.” 2 Timothy 3:16–17

Without it, we would just be stumbling around in the dark with only lies, fables, assorted pagan doctrines, superstitions and BBC documentaries to rely on.

Jonathan G.,United States, 21 May 2013

Regarding the Miller–Urey experiment, I made a point a few years ago to read the section in my son’s high-school science textbook covering that experiment. The section is misleading. After almost an entire page describing this experiment, and thus planting the seed in kids’ minds that it explained the origin of life, the author finally stated: “we now know,” which is coded language for “everything we just told you is wrong.” But the damage is done at that point, because the students will still come away remembering that experiment. At least the textbook author did have the honesty to eventually state the following about the origin of life: “The correct answer has not been determined yet.” However, that admission should have come first in the section, and not buried at the end where it is likely to be missed or glossed over.

Bob S.,United States, 21 May 2013

This article is an excellent example of how Christ speaks through His creation. Those who hear His Voice can see these facts plainly. Those who don’t want to hear His Voice will not see what He is saying through these facts any more than they will receive His Words if they read the Bible. All they can see in their own internal paradigm.

Those who actually follow Christ, and are not just Christians in name only but who hear His Voice as Christ said they do—these are comparing what Christ is saying to them through the Bible to what Christ is saying through His Creation and to what evolution's evangelists are saying, and they see the inconsistencies of those who don’t want to acknowledge God in their minds.

The many folk-tales of evolution are just so much ‘magicians patter’ to cover for the poor starting point of all ungodly thinking. Their root premise or stating point is a set of assumptions they don't even try to prove. When these are challenged, the ungodly people who are so eager to argue usually jump out of the conversation after a few vain attempts to call their assumptions ‘self-evident’ and to call the Christ-follower's starting point ‘opinion’. The follower of Christ doesn’t need to rely on assumption as a starting point. Christ-followers follow Christ as He leads. His sheep hear His Voice. Their starting point is revelation from the Most High God Who cannot lie. They build on the Rock, the firm Foundation of Christ's real-time revelation. Their faith comes by hearing and their hearing comes by the Word (literally Utterance) of God.

Joseph M.,United States, 21 May 2013

“Stanley Miller had demonstrated that the first steps on the path leading to life had happened spontaneously.” In a nutshell, this statement sums up the utter blindness of those who believe in the evolution lie. After describing all the steps the intelligent scientist went through to achieve his results, Attenborough claims it happened “spontaneously”. I guess only God can heal the blind, and we all need to pray for the blindness so prevalent today.

Alan J.,United Kingdom, 21 May 2013

“You ought to think of a parasitic worm that lives only in the eyeballs of human beings, boring its way through them, in West Africa, for example, where it’s common, turning people blind.”

Evolutionists published a report, six months prior to Attenborough making this statement, confirming that it is not the worm that causes the problem but bacteria carried by the worm that causes the blindness, and that the worm only gets into the blood stream because the victim has been bitten by a carrier.

You would have thought an such an eminent ‘scientist’ as Attenborough would have kept up with developments. He also omits the fact that the worm tries to burrow its way out of the human body from other sites as well. But, hey, why let the facts get in the way of a good story?

The worm is doing what it was created to do—it’s just doing it in the wrong place.

Stephen S.,United States, 21 May 2013

Reading articles such as this only serves to reinforce why I believe so strongly in the creation of our universe as described in Genesis. From the time I was in school, naturalist dogma never made any sense to me as the ultimate question of how we and everything around us came to be was never fully answered. A critical reading of the facts shows that the evolutionists’ story is just that—a story. Perhaps the evolutionary ‘account’ of origins would best begin with the words “Once upon a time …” like the rest of the bedtime fables we grew up with.

Jennifer P.,Australia, 22 May 2013

It is often said that “the child is the father of the man” in the sense that beliefs undertaken in childhood often guide the interpretation of the way data and facts are understood by an adult.

I seem to recall both Richard and brother David Attenborough were impressed as teenagers by an English man, an acknowledged fake American Indian who travelled the world doing conservation ‘greenie’ shows. His name may have been Grey Wolf ? This greatly affected their combined rejection of any childhood understanding of Christianity.

Without a Biblical Creationist understanding of the Fall and the consequences for all humanity leading to the first Judgement of the Global Flood and ultimately the Final or Last judgement when Jesus comes again, the big picture of restoration is difficult to see or discern. The blindness of the unsaved person.

Don't listen to them, Sir David. There is a worm that causes blindness, and it is found in far more places than just Africa. Its name is 'evolution', and I'm sorry to say that you have it. There is an antidote, but so far, I'm sorry to say, you have rejected Him. "Let there be light!"